Open Windows
by A Witness
Summary: Dennis, Cordy’s resident ghost, reflects a bit on his would-be love of his life, his death, his disposition, and Cordelia. R


DISCLAIMER: ANGEL and all contents (characters, scenes, plot and/or developments, etc.) and/or aspects of ANGEL which may appear in, have inspired, or relate to this fiction are the exclusive property of Joss Whedon, David Greenwalt, the WB, 20th Century Fox Television, Mutant Enemy Inc, Greenwolf Co., Kuzui Enterprises, and Sandollar Television, as well as any other parties unintentionally unnamed. NO INFRINGEMENT IS INTENDED. The author does not claim any ownership of "ANGEL" in any form and/or part. PLEASE DON'T SUE! Isabel Kyle's plot is from the ANGEL episode R\ m w\ a Vu, belonging also to those listed above.   
  
BASED ON: R\ m w\ a Vu, and a touch of HERO. (sniffle on the HERO memories)  
  
TIMEFRAME: After Doyle, around April ('cause it's raining)  
  
RATED: G (kept it pretty simple)  
  
WARNING: It's a bit of a crier, if you're really emotional, but mostly a sad sniffler.  
  
NOTE: Shorter fic mostly about what Dennis is thinking. I thought it would be interesting to have the view point of Cordelia's resident ghost for once, since I've read almost EVERY Angel fanfiction there is on the WEB and haven't found any on Dennis, or about him for center piece. So here goes. I wrote this on a night when I had nothing better to do. There's also a very little bit about the C/D romance cut short and Dennis' own life and romance, also cut short, with his fiancee who I've given a name.   
  
OPEN WINDOWS  
by a Witness  
  
Whenever it rains, I leave my window open, letting the rain pour in and through me, and wishing it would batter my face instead. I don't know why I do this. I think it's because it tingles, and I like anything that gives me feeling. Vanquishing my mom was more of a revenge thing and I'm generally human-friendly. I can hear her screams, though, and then, I remember what it was like to die. Suffocating, unable to breathe and drifting off to a sleep I knew I wouldn't awaken from. Or thought I wouldn't. All because I had loved her. All because I had loved Isabel Kyle. She had glowed. We were supposed to run off to New York that day. And then…I don't really know what happened to Isabel. I still think about her, though, her glowing brown hair that cascaded down her back in beautiful waves, making it to her shoulders and gently drifting to the small of her back like a waterfall. Like a dark brown waterfall that I so often lost myself in. She was mellow, sweet-hearted, gentle…she loved animals. Isabel had had a cat. May still have a cat. She always smelled like almond milk and sometimes, when I'm feeling the most real - whenever it rains and my open windows let it drizzle into me - I can almost breathe her. I'm not really sure what almond milk smells like, but I'm pretty sure that it smells like her. I met her at one of my older friend's parties. It was her beauty that had caught my eye, and the intellect that glowed in her full-lipped smile. Her rich skin and those beautiful green eyes had always seemed to…But now, I guess that for all I know, Isabel Kyle is dead. Hopefully, she's not like me. Not suffering my fate, and not a figureless ghost-murderer, not even able to scare humans. Half humans. Vampires. Or the like.   
  
Isabel Kyle. I can't even whisper her name, but I remember the sound of her voice, soft and full. And I remember, very clearly, the way I used to say her name. Isabel. Kyle.  
  
What's stopping me from drifting up to the light that beckons me every morning then, and seeing her again in a place better than this? I think that it's something about home, binding me down, and atonement. It really is all about atonement in the year 2000, isn't it? Atonement for what? I don't know: banishing my mom to a ghost Limbo that only my kind - my kind, hah, when did it get to that? - has access to? But then, I guess I'm not really a ghost-murderer then, am I? I'm just a guy who banned his one and only family, his mother, who loved…who killed him? Who left him to suffocate in a hole in her wall, while his love waited at a train station for him, though he would never come. How long had she waited? What had she done after she had waited and realized that I wasn't coming? Did she know what happened? Did she care? Did she cry herself to sleep and wonder? Did she think that I still loved her, or did she think I was a heartless bastard who went ahead and left her to wait and wait and wait…? Where was she now? Had she found someone else to love, who wasn't a ghost who so often wished…Or was she still waiting, at that train station, for me to appear?  
  
These questions run through my mind so often. Isabel Kyle runs through my mind so often, especially when it rains. Because the rain makes me feel alive, letting it pass through my form and making my *face* and *body* all the way to my *toes* and *fingers* tingle. I wish I were alive during these moments, for so many reasons. To feel the rain battering my face as it fell through my open window, instead of finding its way through me…the door behind me opens and I turn around and see her. She's crying, like she sometimes does on stormy, dark nights, her brown eyes swollen and a little red, her brown hair - which reminds me so much of Isabel's - damp and stringy, but she's still so very beautiful. She pulls off her jacket and throws it on the couch. Automatically, I know that it's not going to make it, and I rush over quickly, laying it gently on the hook, instead of allowing the dripping leather to dampen the couch. She didn't use the umbrella that is leaning against the bright wall. I close the window, not wanting her soak her more than she already is. I can hear her voice softly saying my name, and thanking me as I bring her the box of Kleenex. She sometimes reveals so much to me in her full voice, telling me her pains and her dark secrets, her account of the night she lost someone so dear to her. I don't think about him, though. I only feel sorry I can't touch her and comfort her the way she needs to be comforted. The way she deserves to be comforted. I want to put my arms around Isabel. But she's not Isabel, I remind myself. She's Cordelia Chase. Someone completely different from Isabel Kyle, someone who doesn't even love me. Someone who loves someone else who's dead. I still remember him, too, a pair of piercing blue eyes and someone Cordelia had often teased. Sometimes he'd tease her back, I can remember. And now, he's been dead for near six months, and she cries about him, on dark and stormy nights that remind her of a dingy cargo ship and an ocean....She tells me all about him, and how much she misses him, having left a hole in her heart, this half-demon I remember seeing once, and who now causes her so much pain.   
  
She looks so much like Isabel, and so often, I want to wrap my arms - my nonexistent arms - around her comfortingly, or like I used to hug Isabel. I remember Isabel's kisses. And I wonder what Cordelia's are like.   
  
Cordelia leans toward me, and I want to be there. To be real. You never really know what real is until you've been a ghost. You never know what you had until it's so far away. Now I so often wish I were solid enough to be leaned on, to feel the rain battering my face past the fluttering curtains. But Cordelia comes right through me, leaning her head against the couch arm. My nonexistent body is tingling. With a thought, I am in her bedroom, and I bring her blanket and wrap it over her shoulders. My Isabel. My Isabel, who I want to feel in my arms all warm and smooth and who smells like almond milk…not that I can really remember what warm is, or what smooth feels like beneath my touch, or what almond milk really smells like.   
  
Cordelia is glowing as the tears stream down her face. I will love you so that you know I'm here for you, and I will be here for you because I love you.   
  
And then I remember his name was Doyle.   
  
It comes right into my mind, the name of the one Cordelia cries for on such nights, hoping the tears would melt with what batters her beautiful face. She cries for him. And I know I'll have to wait for my Isabel Kyle. I'll have to wait until I can gain enough confidence to walk towards the beckoning light that glares with the sun, apart from the sun, every morning, only for me. And then, I'm next to the dining table, Cordelia crying for her own love behind me, window before me. Isabel Kyle, I think, as I open the window and rain patters through me, on the wood floor while I also wish it would batter my face. I always wish I could be alive…  
  
…as it rains through open windows.  
  
FIN 


End file.
